Have you ever been waiting for something, something you must work on, which must then be passed on to someone else?

You have a lot of work to do as it is, but someone else is asking for your piece to the work you are waiting for. From their perspective, you are the delay when in actual fact, it is the person before you who is holding things up. They, in turn, have their own issues and perhaps they too are waiting for another person.

You continue to do other work and continue to pass along your work to others, who are also most interested in the delayed piece of work. Even if they get work previously considered urgent, the focus is on the piece they don't have.

Regardless of your profession or work environment, chances are you can relate to this scenario. Assuming a reasonable degree of competence of all parties involved, maybe there is something at work here directly affecting your collective ability to be productive.

The Theory of Constraints follows a simple approach which considers the challenges - or constraints - confronting each link in your process. Your business is like a chain and that chain is only as strong as the weakest link.